Dingy white t-shirt

One of the great things about working for YouthWorks is all of the free clothes I get. Now, I’m not talking about anything designer or name brand, and not even much that I can wear to work during the off-season, but over the years YouthWorks has outfitted me with enough quality screen-printed, poly-cotton blend t-shirts that I could wear a different one each day of the month and still have a few left over (granted, my t-shirt collection is now spread between Minnesota, Alabama, and a few random Goodwill stores). The YouthWorks Staff t-shirts that comprise my summer wardrobe have seen it all: summer road trips in vans with no air conditioning, hugs from little ones who haven’t bathed in days, splatters of taco grease, barbeque sauce, vanilla pudding, a few sprays of bleach water here and there, paint in various shades of YouthWorks brown, and more sweaty trips to Sam’s Club than one might care to imagine. After all of this (and I hate to admit it) these shirts don’t spend much time in the washing machine. I think I’ve worn most of my shirts four or five times between washings this summer. My gray staff t-shirts and colorful “One Word” shirts don’t seem to mind this routine too much. My white t-shirts are a different story.

I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to make half of our staff shirts white. At the beginning of the summer, they look great: bright, clean, maybe even a little more sharp and professional than the gray. However, after just a couple of wearings, these shirts begin to show the evidence of work-filled, hot summer days, and no matter how many times I wash them, they just won’t return to their original glory. They have become drab and dingy, and the pale yellow-gray hue they acquire just makes them look tired.

Watching my Coahoma staff team sporting their slightly ashen, formerly white YouthWorks t-shirts as they welcomed their groups this past Sunday, I thought about how their shirts didn’t match their attitudes. At the beginning of the summer when their shirts were fresh and new, these staff were certainly enthusiastic, but they lacked the cool confidence and ease that comes with having a few YouthWorks weeks under your belt. Now they are more on top of things, their site runs like a well-oiled machine, and it seems to me that their YouthWorks uniform should be as clean and sharp as their daily routine has become. But then I wonder, have we really become cleaner as the summer has progressed?

I certainly haven’t. I look back on the past eight weeks and think about how often I have worn my own dirt on my sleeve. Here I am in my fifth YouthWorks summer, and nothing has been easy, mostly because of how often I have been confronted with my own sin and messiness. My impatience with imperfect people has distanced me from some of my staff. Selfishness has led me to fight every step of the way when things weren’t going my way – whether that means arguing with my boss or getting mad at God. Disobedience has made me resist the steps that God would have me take, and He’s had to drag me down the narrow road kicking and screaming at times. Laziness has made me complacent about spending time praying and reading God’s word. All of this has come together to make me crabby, emotional, irritable, and a generally not-nice person. I feel like this summer has brought out the worst in me, and I am wearing my sin like a dingy white t-shirt.

I wonder if summer has felt this way for any of my staff. Has the intensity, pace, and close quarters of a YouthWorks summer brought some of their previously hidden spots and stains to the surface? Have they, too, come to realize how much they need grace, but how little they deserve it?

I fold my laundry and re-pack my suitcase, a little embarrassed by the state of my white shirts. I go ahead and relegate one to be a running t-shirt. I wonder if any amount of hot water and bleach might bring these shirts back to their original brilliance, but I doubt it. I wish that I could have a new start – a new set of fresh white shirts; maybe I could keep them clean the second time around. Inevitably though, the dirt would somehow show up again. This is sin. This is humanity. This is life.

...Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:25-27

Only God has water hot enough and soap strong enough to wash it all away. Amazingly enough, he will continue to wash it away, no matter how many times the dirt keeps coming back. And when all is said and done, I will stand before my Savior and He will exchange my shabby garment for a spotless white wedding gown. That is grace. That is the Lord. That is life eternal and abundant.